


Spiraling

by Sampika



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Insanity, Isolation, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 22:17:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sampika/pseuds/Sampika
Summary: How can you tell what's going on in someone's head? Easy answer: you can't. So when something goes wrong, nobody knows to fix it until it's too late.





	Spiraling

**Author's Note:**

> I know I should be working on my other fics, but I just had an idea and had to write a drabble for it. My phoenix AU and cat AU are still being worked on, sorry about the slow updates on those. I've been trying to get a job recently for the summer, so that and school has been taking up a lot of my time. I'm also working on three longer length fics that I haven't even begun posting yet...

It started when the aliens invaded New York.

Humans weren’t alone. And they were weak. Far, _far_ too weak. At the bottom of the galactic food chain. Nothing more than mice in a universe of cats. 

His sacrifice was the only reason they’d won. Was it a sacrifice? It was getting harder to remember the facts. To know what was real and what wasn’t. Because the cold darkness would descend upon him when ever he closed his eyes, whenever he fell asleep, whenever the goddamned lights were off. Tony couldn’t look at the stars without choking for breath, he couldn’t go near a lake or the ocean without feeling like the water would rise up and pull him under. 

Falling, falling, falling.

Why didn’t anyone understand? Why wouldn’t they listen? 

Why did they get to sleep when he never could?

They told him to get his shit together. They told him to stop freaking out. To stop, stop, _stop._ How could he stop? 

They didn’t want him working in his lab, working on his suits. They said it was unhealthy. But how could the only thing he could do to be safe be somehow unhealthy? When he was lost in the metal and the wires and the bright blue light, the darkness could not reach him. The air could not run from his lungs like deer fleeing a wolf. He was wrapped in his own self made safety, a blanket nobody could take from him. 

They would have to pry the suits from his cold, dead hands.

Pepper said they were a distraction. Rhodey said that he was obsessed. Happy never said anything, but he could tell from the look in the man’s eyes that he was disappointed.

Then Ultron, his dream, his vision, a way to keep the world safe. And it turned on him. Hated him. Wanted him dead. Wanted the _rest of the world_ dead. His own creation, born of his fear and his panic and his visions. Twisted into hatred and destruction, unwilling to stop. Unable to stop.

So he had to be put to an end by force. No wonder Ultron was the way he was. He was Tony’s son, after all.

Still falling. 

Maybe he would never hit the bottom.

Maybe there was no bottom. Maybe he was back in the cold reaches of the cosmos., billions of light years from his home. 

Not that he was any safer there than here.

Nothing was safe.

There was only the unending night, lost in the web of a billion trillion stars, caught some place between one nebula and the next. A void in the galaxy, a place where no light, no _warmth_ could reach. And he was still falling.

One day the dark matter would consume him, swallow him up into nothing so he could become stardust once more. But the universe was cruel. It waited, and waited, and waited, and it never ceased the torture. His racing heart would never stop beating, it would never rest, never slow down and stop. Tony was kept alive enough to fear, and only fear. He could take no action against it. Not when his once safe metal and wires and fire could turn on him. Not when they told him he couldn’t.

Were they real, the ones who told him to stop trying to fight it? Or did he make them up, too, out here where his mind was his only company, and his nightmares his only friends? 

_You’re going mad, Tony._

A half memory, a fleeting recollection of words, sounds that might have been. In another time. Another place. But there was no other place than here, where the fear consumed him from the inside out like a virus, ever so slowly chewing away any passing thought of purpose, of a need to fight. 

It used to be so, so strong; that desire to fight back, to do the right thing, to protect. Or had it? He couldn’t remember, now. It was nice to think that it had been, that he’d done something right with his life once upon a time. It was something to latch himself onto, something to give him an illusion of anchorage amongst the chaos of falling. It wouldn’t last forever. It was only a matter of time before that hope slipped between his fingers and was lost to the aberration.

Still falling, and falling, and falling. It would never end.

_Tony, you need to listen to us. Just let us help you._

Why? Never did in the past. No one ever did.

_We didn’t know. We made mistakes._

_You don’t have to do this._

_Please, Tony._

…Please?

_Please._

Help.

**Author's Note:**

> It bothers me that in the MCU, literally _everyone_ ignores Tony's mental health problems. He very cleary has anxiety and PTSD, and shows signs of depression too, but they just... don't seem to care. Rhodey says "it isn't a good look" when Tony is having an anxiety attack, Pepper says that his only therapeutic activity is just a distraction. uifdsifsudfg it just makes me a bit salty


End file.
